Color

By: Cavis Chan

I stood amidst the dead of the night, staring desolately into the empty night scenery. My mind slowly drifts back to a cheerier time, and I think of a friend of mine as my mind brimmed with dreams of my distant past…

He always stood by me and accompanied me from my youth to adulthood. The first time I met him was in my home, his amiable and brilliant smile exuded innocence and enthusiasm. The sun was bright that day, bathing the room in its gentle and golden glow. I felt the warmth of the light, and couldn't help but smile. I looked towards my friend, and he was doing the same.

That night, I introduced my new friend to my mother, but she simply smiled before bluntly asking me to finish my homework.

Decades have passed, and I had since grown up. I remember I wanted to be an astronaut when I was young but eventually became a construction worker. I had already moved out by then, and because of my busy work, I rarely met with my family. I lived alone and often felt empty and abandoned, but I did have my friend, who I spoke to very often.

One night, we met again, he told me: "Don't worry, you are living well now, you have everything you need: food, a roof over your head, and clothes to wear, and I believe that one day you will achieve your dream." He forced a smile as he spoke, but it was a transparent facade that poorly concealed a ghostly pallor. His dark, sunken eyes exuded a sense of deep exhaustion. I walked slowly to a window and stared emptily at the gloomy scenery, there was not a single star in the sky. A crow far off in the distance croaked against the silence of the macabre night, and there hung the silver moon amongst the ghostly clouds, radiating its ghastly glow against the dying of the light.

Decades more have passed, and I am already an old man. I am still a construction worker, now a shell, a husk, filled with nothing but broken dreams. I simply threw myself into my work, blissfully ignorant of time flowing by. Eventually, however, time caught on, I used to be able to carry 25 kilograms alone, but now I could barely carry the weight of my own fragile body, and one day I was finally let go. Fiery wrath burned within me, and resentment plagued my mind. It was a vile betrayal of my service and loyalty, but I was forced to understand, forced to accept it.

As I walked home I slowly came to a lake, I began walking alongside it. It was midnight, and the surroundings were very quiet, the silence filled only by the depressing sound of my footsteps, awkwardly accompanied by the passive gushing of the lake... Suddenly, I came to a stop and looked down into the shadowy waters, I saw my friend once again. The lake rippled as it flowed, the water level rising and falling. It blurred my friend’s face and it was not easy to recognize him under the dim moonlight. His smile had disappeared, there was not a trace of hope in his eyes, and his countenance was one of misery and pain. His face was full of deep wrinkles and scars, strands of white and grey streamed out of his disheveled hair. After enduring the vicissitudes of life, his face was no longer recognizable.

Time and tide wait for no man, I hadn’t realized my life had whisked by so quickly, now only a decrepit, grey old man remains. I yearn for the day I was sitting in that room with my friend. I yearn for a glimpse of his youthful smile once more, one that was full of innocence and enthusiasm. I yearn for the soft and golden sunlight, that warmth. Yet that reality has become history, existing only as memories I recall in nostalgic fondness.

I slept soundly that night and dreamt deeply, in the dream I was on a beach. I had recognized it, and vividly recalled how I had been running along its shore as a young man. I was trying to get somewhere, someplace I had forgotten, someplace far away. In the dream I was doing the same, the wind rushing beside my ears, the sand whispering beneath my feet, I was running faster and faster. Except in the dream I began to slow down… until I came to a stop. I slowly turned towards the sea and looked up at the sky. It was sunset, and I had never seen something so colorful, so intensely beautiful. A brilliant glow emanated from behind streaks of bright pink clouds, etched against a bright field of purple, azure, and fiery amber. The water was so clear and calm it became a mirror that perfectly reflected the colorful symphony that emblazoned the heavens, the horizon simply disappeared.

I was engrossed by this scenery, there was something so powerful, something so divine about this moment. I sat down in the soft sand and time seemed to be frozen still, I simply wanted to stay right there in the moment. I could hear the sound of waves crashing and retreating. A soft breeze passed by, whispering in my ear. It carried the scent of the sea, so strong I could taste it, and this moment was no longer just a dream, it became reality, a colorful memory.